Vendor Landscape: Cloud Infrastructure- As-A-Service
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Vendor Landscape: Cloud Infrastructure- as-a-Service Options are proliferating as Cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service provides a highly agile and low capital cost option for outsourcing IT infrastructure. Info-Tech Research Group 1 Introduction Cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is seeing explosive growth, both in the proportion of enterprises looking to IaaS deployment (37% in a recent Info-Tech survey) and in the number and variety of vendor offerings. This Research Is Designed For: This Research Will Help You: Enterprises looking to outsource a portion of Understand what and who is new in the Cloud their IT infrastructure to an external host. Infrastructure-as-a-Service market. Businesses looking to avoid capital expanse in Evaluate Cloud IaaS providers and products expanding their compute and storage for your enterprise needs. infrastructure. Determine which products are most Companies looking to integrate or federate appropriate for particular use cases and internal and external infrastructure to meet and scenarios. manage growing capacity demands. Info-Tech Research Group 2 Executive Summary Info-Tech evaluated fifteen competitors in the IaaS market, Info-Tech Insight including the following notable performers: Champions: 1. Cloud IaaS is set for rapid growth • Amazon played a large part in creating this market and is still leading Of the three forms of cloud service delivery it today. New features and services are consistently being rolled out (Infrastructure-as-a-Service, Software-as-a- as Amazon unrelentingly pursues innovation. Service, Platform-as-a-Service), IaaS is • Rackspace earned the title of Champion for its work with OpenStack, growing fastest – 200% from 2010 to 2012. product strategy, and its interface’s ease of use. (See Appendix 1 for more). • GoGrid was also there at the start of the IaaS market and has 2. Cloud IaaS options proliferating continued to improve and hone its offering since. With mainstreaming of server consolidation • AT&T has one of the largest networks to support its cloud offerings, and virtualization technologies (example, earning the Champion title for its overall strength. VMware) IT is seeing Cloud IaaS options from a multitude of local, national, and • Terremark offers a strong product backed by the vast resources of international co-location and managed Verizon, securing it the Champion title. service providers. • HP, despite its product still being in beta form, was named Champion, promising to only improve its offering as time goes on. 3. Hybrid services are hot Providers are differentiating themselves • iland has earned the Champion title largely through its extensive and through hybrid service offerings. This impressive feature set. includes internal/external and private/public Value Award: cloud hybrids, but also outsourcing multi- • Amazon has been given the Value Award for pairing the most service hybrids with co-location and competitive prices in the industry with a strong solution. managed services. Trend Setter Award: • iland was given the Trend Setter Award for its work in championing VMware-based IaaS within the industry and its innovative offerings, such as Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) support. Info-Tech Research Group 3 Market Overview How it got here Where it’s going • In tough economic times, the urge to outsource is • Cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service is a delivery model greatest. As IT capital budgets remain tight, “can we for cloud computing where the customer can provision use the cloud for this?” is becoming a more compute resources – such as processing, storage, common question, and this will continue to fuel and networks – on a pay-by-consumption basis from interest in IaaS. an abstracted compute cloud (See Appendix 7). • The vendor landscape for Cloud IaaS is growing as • In 2006, Amazon disrupted an existing infrastructure service providers build out consolidated, virtualized service outsourcing market – that includes web infrastructures based on the same technologies hosting, co-location, and fully managed services – with being used by their customers. For example, a its elastic compute cloud (EC2), which was based on number of providers base their solutions on VMware Amazon’s excess infrastructure capacity. virtualization. • In response to Amazon’s inexpensive and agile • In addition to the large solution providers covered in offering, traditional hosting vendors, such as this Vendor Landscape, mid-sized enterprises are Rackspace and GoGrid, soon had competing Cloud increasingly contracting Cloud IaaS from the same IaaS services, as have large tech-vendors and global local and regional service providers that supplied managed services providers (e.g. IBM, HP, CSC, co-location, hosting, and managed services. AT&T). Growing adoption of internal infrastructure consolidation and virtualization is spurring growth of external Cloud IaaS. Server virtualization is now mainstream with the majority (58%) of workloads virtualized in 2012. Concurrently, Cloud IaaS services based on similar architectures have grown, as have “hybrid” service plays that federate internal and external virtualized Infrastructure-as-a-Service. Info-Tech Research Group 4 IaaS Vendor selection / knock-out criteria: market share, mind share, and platform coverage • The Cloud IaaS market is broadening. With widespread adoption of enabling platforms, such as VMware vCloud Director (vCD) and the open source OpenStack, hundreds of local and regional service providers now have clouds. • For this Vendor Landscape, Info-Tech focused on those vendors that offer broad capabilities across multiple platforms and that have a strong market presence and/or growing reputational presence among small to mid-sized enterprises. Included in this Vendor Landscape: • Amazon. A founder in the IaaS market, continually leading the industry with its innovative and practical solutions. • AT&T. A top service provider for businesses around the globe, AT&T has expanded to include cloud computing. • Bluelock. VMware vCloud Datacenter provider with IaaS offerings, Bluelock provides flexibility for IT leaders. • CloudSigma. As an IaaS provider with a focus on taking advantage of Cloud capabilities, it aims for a versatile platform • Computer Sciences Corp. CSC’s solution includes integrating IaaS within the customer's existing IT environment. • GoGrid. Specializing in IaaS solutions, GoGrid brings its considerable experience as an infrastructure hosting provider. • HP. Tech giant, HP, dips its toes into the Cloud services pool, focusing on the delivery of IaaS to enterprises. • Hosting.com. Hosting.com provides solutions with impressive high availability and disaster recovery capabilities. • IBM. With a strong business centric history, IBM helps clients optimize the process of adopting IaaS. • iland. iland is a new and up and coming provider that is getting attention for innovative service offerings. • Joyent. Flexible and fast product offering from Joyent makes for an intuitive choice for developers with hefty loads. • Dimension Data. Leading IaaS provider boosted to big leagues through acquisition by global service player. • Rackspace. Its innovative Cloud hosting and managed hosting solutions secures its global presence in the market. • Savvis. Acquired by Centurylink, Savvis’s solutions now have a much larger backing of resources for support. • Terremark. After acquiring Terremark, Verizon has been able to aggressively expand its IaaS offerings. Info-Tech Research Group 5 Cloud IaaS criteria & weighting factors The Table Stakes Criteria Weighting: Features Usability Product Evaluation Criteria 25% 20% The solution provides basic Features and advanced feature/functionality. The solution’s dashboard and reporting tools are 30% Usability 25% intuitive and easy to use. Architecture Affordability The three year TCO of the solution is Affordability Product economical. 50% The delivery method of the solution aligns with Architecture what is expected within the space. Vendor Evaluation Criteria 50% Vendor is profitable, knowledgeable, and will be Viability Vendor around for the long-term. Viability Strategy Vendor is committed to the space and has a Strategy 25% future product and portfolio roadmap. 35% Vendor offers global coverage and is able to sell Reach and provide post-sales support. 10% Vendor channel strategy is appropriate and the Channel Channel 30% Reach channels themselves are strong. Info-Tech Research Group 6 The Info-Tech Cloud IaaS Vendor Landscape The Zones of the Landscape The Info-Tech Vendor Landscape: Champions receive high scores for most evaluation criteria and offer excellent value. They have a strong market presence and are usually the trend setters for the industry. Dimension Market Pillars are established players with very Data Amazon strong vendor credentials, but with more average iland product scores. Rackspace Innovators have demonstrated innovative product GoGrid HP strengths that act as their competitive advantage in Terremark appealing to niche segments of the market. CloudSigma AT&T Emerging Players are newer vendors who are Bluelock starting to gain a foothold in the marketplace. They IBM Joyent balance product and vendor attributes, though score lower relative to market Champions. Hosting.com CSC Savvis For an explanation of how the Info-Tech Vendor Landscape is created, please see Vendor Landscape Methodology: Information Presentation in the Appendix. Info-Tech Research Group 7 Balance individual strengths to find the best fit for your enterprise Product Vendor Overall Features